Shards
by Qwi-Xux
Summary: Sometimes the smallest things brought it all back and old wounds would reopen.  -Tifa-centric, Cloud/Tifa, one-shot-


**A/N: **This was written for my friend **fairheartstrife. **I'm a bit out of practice writing FFVII, but hopefully this isn't too much of a disaster. O_O It was supposed to be Cloud/Tifa, but it kind of ended up being way Tifa-centric.

**Disclaimer: **FFVII doesn't belong to me.

* * *

Tifa's father loved building things. She wasn't sure if it was something that many people knew, but she spent hours of her childhood listening to him sawing away at wood, or whittling it with tools. Her house boasted a collection of handcrafted birdhouses, a long box outside that held the flowers for spring, several chairs, a small desk. There was a bookshelf that held the collection of books that had been Tifa's mother's, and which Tifa added to whenever she could get her hands on a new book. So many things in her childhood home had her father's touch on them.

When he was angry, or sad, or when the mood struck him, she was never surprised to see him going at a piece of wood. She loved listening to him whistle as he carved, loved the smell of sawdust in the air. She delighted in the time he carved two little boats and took her to a stream so that they could have a race. He made her a doll with jointed arms and legs and painted a smiling face on the round wooden head, and even though she protested that she was fourteen and too old for dolls, it always made her smile when she saw it sitting on top of her piano.

And then it was all gone in raging fire and bloody death. Her father, her house, her friends and neighbors. Every comfort and familiarity ripped away, and she was left to find her way in Midgar, a city that smelled of pollution and filth. Gone was the fresh mountain air, the smells of flowers and clean water, the sounds of birds singing and crickets chirping.

Gone was the smell of sawdust and the sound of whistling.

After Meteor and Sephiroth, when Tifa and Cloud and Barret were rebuilding their lives and their home, their house in Edge was made from a great deal of plaster, metal, and cement, but Tifa gathered as much wood as she could find to incorporate it into their new home. Over the next couple of years, she gathered wooden bedframes, bookshelves, a toy chest, dressers, picture frames—anything that she could find.

She was sure Cloud noticed her wood-gathering, because one day, he brought home a beautiful wooden chair. She was out shopping and didn't see it until she walked into the living room off of the bar and nearly ran into it. It was a gorgeous, deep red wood, and she ran her hands over the smooth arms of the chair, a deep ache mingling with a sense of comfort, before going to find Cloud and thank him.

A few months after Cloud and Denzel had been healed of Geostigma, while they were all continuing to rebuild their home, their family, and any remaining sense of security they could scrape together, Cloud brought home a stack of wood from a delivery run up to Kalm. "I thought we could make a bookshelf or something," he said quietly as he stacked it against the wall in the garage. "The kids' books are starting to overflow."

Tifa wasn't entirely sure what brought her out to the garage the next day, while Cloud was running an errand and the kids were playing outside. She sorted through the wooden planks; they had plenty for a bookshelf, and there would be some leftover. She ran her hands over the smooth, sanded wood and closed her eyes. It smelled fresh, not like the lumber that had already been shaped and built into furniture. The deep, bubbling ache of longing and nostalgia rose up fiercely and she squeezed her eyes shut. Memories of her father danced around her head and the lump in her throat was so thick she could hardly swallow.

When she opened her eyes, she dragged one of the long boards over to the workbench. Part of her knew exactly what she was doing, and the other part of her was afraid and uncertain.

_Afraid of what? It's a piece of wood, _she told herself, but she knew it was much more than that. Her hands, which were always steady when pouring beer, mending children's bloody knees, and punching the lights out of someone threatening the people she loved, were trembling when she carefully measured out the wood. They were shaking worse when she picked up the saw and placed it against the marks she had made on the board. She gripped it more tightly and moved it back and forth, slowly cutting into the wood. Chips of sawdust drifted to the floor of the garage, and the fragrance of it overwhelmed her. Suddenly, she was sawing faster and harder, almost frantically, until the pieces were all cut.

_Her father laughing…her father broken and bleeding…sailing wooden boats down the stream…rubbing her bloodied hands in a stream after a battle…humming along with her father's whistling…screaming under the stars, alone in the middle of a field, screaming and screaming until her voice was hoarse and her throat hurt…_

"Tifa?"

Cloud's voice, startled and worried, snapped her back to reality and she realized she was kneeling on the floor in the garage, clutching pieces of the board to her chest and shaking like a leaf in a windstorm. She blinked rapidly and turned her face away from Cloud, wiping away the tears on her face.

_I can't cry now, I can't cry, I won't cry. _She took several deep, calming breaths as Cloud picked up the saw off the floor and set it on the workbench. He slowly sat down next to her, right there on the floor of the garage, and his gloved fingers brushed against the sawdust on the floor. His arm pressed against hers, but he didn't say anything. He just waited until she said, her voice deceptively calm, "I wanted to make a birdhouse." The smell of the sawdust was overwhelming and her heart was pounding as memories of her father continued to pour through her mind. Laughter mingled with crying. Healing mingled with pain. Life with death. It was all twisted and broken and the pain was always lurking beneath the surface.

"It never goes away." She touched the pile of sawdust. She couldn't explain, not without breaking down, which she was not going to do. She couldn't explain what this meant to her, couldn't explain the way the most ordinary of things could jump out of nowhere and bring back memories, good or bad, of everything she had lost, couldn't explain that the wounds had left ugly scars that never went away.

But it was Cloud, and she didn't have to explain, because there was no one in the world who could understand more than him. All he asked was, "Do you want help? I can hold the boards while you nail them together."

She looked down at the boards in her hands, relieved to see her fingers were holding steady. "I think I'd like to finish on my own."

Cloud nodded and stood up, reaching a hand down toward her. She shifted the wood to one arm and reached back, allowing him to pull her to her feet. He squeezed her fingers as he gave her one last searching look, then his mouth curved upward ever so slightly in an encouraging smile, and he turned to walk out of the garage.

Once he was gone, Tifa got to work with the hammer and nails. Her eyes were clear and her hands were steady as she nailed the pieces into place. When she saw her finished product—a bit misshapen, definitely nowhere near as beautiful as one of her father's—she smiled. Then, abruptly, she was crying, sinking down into the middle of the sawdust on the floor and burying her face in her knees.

She missed her father so badly. She missed him so much and she wished that she could tell him how much she loved him, how much he had taught her, how much he had meant to her. She wished he could be there to pat her on the shoulder and tell her that she'd get better at building a birdhouse if she practiced, like he'd always told her when she was struggling with a particularly difficult piano piece.

She wasn't sure how long she sat there on the floor by herself, but she slowly got a grip on herself. She rubbed her hands across her face and accidentally got sawdust in her eyes, so at least when she went back inside and found Cloud giving Marlene and Denzel snacks, she could blame her red face and eyes on that.

That night, she carried the birdhouse up to the roof of Seventh Heaven and set it on the ground. She would have to build a post of some sort to hold it up, but she would worry about that later. She looked up at the sky and whispered, "For you, Dad. I know we didn't always agree about some things, but I hope…I hope that my life would have made you proud." She closed her eyes and the warm evening breeze wafted across her face. "I was proud of you. I hope you knew that."

She went downstairs and helped Cloud tuck Denzel and Marlene into bed. Afterward, in the hallway outside their room, Cloud looked at her and said, "My mother loved cooking, but I can _never _seem to get the hang of it."

Tifa slipped into his arms and held him tightly, fingers digging into his vest. Breathing in other familiar smells—of leather and Cloud's soap, of her home _now_. She listened to the kids whispering in their bedroom, heard Marlene giggle, felt Cloud's hand tracing circles on her back, and she relaxed against him. Maybe her scars were deep and ugly, and maybe sometimes they ripped open and had to bleed for a little while before they could mend again, but at least she had _this_. This time with Cloud, Marlene, and Denzel. This home where laughter had slowly grown, where they were all trying to put the shards of their lives back together and find some semblance of peace. Where she could bake triple chocolate cookies with Marlene, have water fights with Denzel, and Cloud always came home.

As long as she had this, she could handle the moments where she was broken and bleeding, and she could reach for the moments of happiness to come.


End file.
